Welfare Waivers Implementation

In the wake of growing dissatisfaction with the welfare system, Congress and the President have been considering welfare reform on a national level. Meanwhile, many states have undertaken far-reaching reforms through waivers of federal provisions governing the program most Americans think of as welfare--Aid to Families With Dependent Children. For example, states have required welfare recipients to work; set limits on lifetime benefits; and denied cash benefits for additional children born to families already receiving welfare. Believing that the findings would be useful to states dealing with the challenge of welfare reform, Congress asked GAO to review some states' early experiences with implementing reforms. This report examines efforts by Florida, Indiana, New Jersey, Virginia, and Wisconsin to implement three key reforms: time-limited benefits, work requirements, and family caps.

GAO found that: (1) the five states made relatively few management or service delivery changes to implement their family cap provisions; (2) the states' geographic scope of implementation and work requirements varied considerably, but time limits for cash benefits were generally 24 months, followed by a longer period of ineligibility for cash assistance; (3) four states changed their welfare program operations to implement their time limits and work requirements; (4) the states encouraged staff and clients to focus on clients' employability by establishing job placement goals for each office, having clients sign personal responsibility agreements, basing benefits on how much time clients spent in work, training, or education activities, increasing clients' financial incentives as they began working, and applying sanctions for clients' failure to comply with program requirements; (5) the states disseminated information to communities and employers to increase their interest in welfare reforms and formed community advisory groups, which usually led to better client access to jobs; (6) the states redesigned their service delivery structures to provide more intensive support for clients by coordinating services, increasing staff interaction with clients, and expanding the availability of child care and transportation for their clients; and (7) the states encountered some problems in implementing welfare reforms, but they were able to resolve most of those problems.